We are the 16%!

Yesterday's "peace march" was a truly astonishing PR stunt. After more than 20 months of amok from a government doing its very best to make some policy against both sides in as many issues as possible, finding so many brain-dead morons to march for them is a genuinely remarkable feat of organizing skills.

 On the 15th of march last year, when the government hired an "audience" of students for Mr Orban's speech from mcjob agencies, it turned out to be a fiasco. The incident was widely reported afterwards, and somehow it became known that the government agency responsible for the thing has called these students a bio-scenery. It was made up of no more than a thousand students.

Well, this time the bio-scenery has got slightly larger... About a hundred times, to be quite specific. Although most of them have left their school desks at least 30 years ago, what matters here is that we have yet to see any fiasco. Apart from the old age of the people - which until now was rather unusual on a right-wing demo - the only fly in the ointment was the fact that a substantial part of the happy and peaceful crowd was imported from neighbouring countries. The opposition cannot even mobilize from the countryside - partly because of the authorities preventing chartered buses from reaching Budapest and the media keeping their mouth shut - but nevertheless there were already two anti-government demonstrations of similar magnitude. I might also mention today's event organized for the last opposition radio station still alive in Hungary. Not considered a major issue by the man on the street, it was still able to attract 20 to 40 thousand people on the spot. (One must note, however, that the station has almost half a million regular listeners.)

Okay, let's cut the crap! All these facts can do nothing to decrease the significance of yesterday's love march for our Dear Leader, with cardboards featuring slogans like "He for us - We for him!". It was really huge. The inner city of Budapest was practically inundated by an ocean of androids and zombies cheering for Mr Orban and his cronies.

First of all, it will probably increase the arrogance and self-confidence of our government's cheerleaders in a substantial way. They will not miss a single opportunity to point out that this march was the "largest in history", and the people are still on their side. It will probably infuse them with a very visible and particularly disgusting sort of malicious joy.

The only problem is that these people are already way too arrogant and self-confident. I mean, it is against their own interest, not that of the opposition, to beef up these two rather unpleasant traits even more. It's already annoying to see every single right-wing comment in a haughty and ruthless stalinist tone. From now on, this will be accompanied by the "Haha losers, you aren't worth piece of shit!" tone.

In the short run, it might turn the EU and the IMF a little more lenient towards compromise, but I'm not sure about this one. They might actually have a clue of how the whole thing was organized. After all, we could see hundreds of thousands marching for the government in Syria as well, and this didn't seem to keep even the arab leage from sanctioning the shit out of the Assad regime. This is a very old and dirty trick, I might say.

It was probably much more effective against the opposition within our borders, actually. That is to say, demoralizing them. I would not be surprised to see emigration figures increase with a measurable quantity after this. As a matter of fact, many people are going to believe with a good reason that there is truly nothing left to do. The economic situation is already dire, the living standards are already much worse than anytime during those 8 years to which the ruling party is so eager to point his fingers, and precarity is already on a scale unprecedented since the end the second world war. Such things can be felt by the population, no matter what the media keep saying.

Nevertheless, there seems to be a very large mass of people who don't feel anything. For them, life seems to be the same - if not better - as it used to be under the "left-wing charlatans". The situation is still the same: the leaders just have to whistle and the huge crowd immediately stands to attention. This is what the Party has just shown us: no matter what happens in the daily life of the people, they still have those magical powers of mind control not only unharmed, but even increased. They just have to push the big button to have more androids start loading combat mode than ever before...

Well, I must say I'm really clueless. I have yet to figure out a logical explanation. For now, I presume one of the following scenarios to be plausible:
If you support the government, you must either get...

• some nifty package of special discounts and bonuses
• some really effective new psychedelic substance
• or both

An opposition blogger has already faced the consequence that it might be best to join the Party after all. Whether the discounts or the substance, it doesn't matter. What matters is that after being less and less able to make ends meet, either option would provide a viable escape from the very physical anguish of our matierial existence.

I think I will join the Party as well...